Category: strategic thinking

Customers have become somewhat cynical about corporations attempts to give back to their communities through CSR programmes. Leading CSR thinkers like Wayne Visser of CSR International have even said CSR is dead.

This makes US based Home Depot’s decision to embrace their customers in their giving campaign particularly gutsy. The companies 260,000 Facebook members can vote on their fan page for the projects that they want the firm to fund in their “Giving Back” campaign.

Norwegian band Dancerock released their new single on a USB stick (called a DataRock) which comes in the shape of a red figurine. The figurine contains their single, ‘Catcher in the Rye’ together with an EP ‘California’, a 60 minute concert film and a number of other bonuses including additional tracks, music videos and photos.

Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Grameen Bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world.

Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.

Micro-credit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions. Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.

Yunus’s long-term vision is to eliminate poverty in the world. That vision can not be realised by means of micro-credit alone. But Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that, in the continuing efforts to achieve it, micro-credit must play a major part.”

I’m interested in people who have strategies to change the world? Often these people go unnoticed for many years. I’d like to notice them. Who do you know who is changing the world?